Properties of Continental Margin and its Hydrocarbon Exploration Significance in Cambrian in the Southern Ordos Kratogen of North China

Abstract:It is important to determine the properties of the tectonics in Cambrian period for the sake of prospecting deep hydrocarbon in the near future in the southern Ordos Kratogen of North China. Authors chose the marginal areas of the southern Ordos basin as the object of research, avoided the effects of both the Qinling Orogenic Belts (QOB) and Weihe River Graben (WRG) whose geological structures are too complicated. By surveying typical Cambrian outcrops and profiles in the basin edges and based on the cores of 57 wells which penetrated the Cambrian in the basin, combined with the seismic profiles, the field gammaray measuement results and the carbon isotope analysis, Authors conclude that the southern margin of the Ordos Kratogen during Cambrian was a passive continental margin which resulted from sea–floor spreading of the Ancient Qinling Ocean. Epicontinental sea carbonate sediments formed in the south Ordos continental margin during Cambrian, and were predominant as tidal flat and oölitic shoal. Both transgression–regression process and the change in palaeostructure have the obvious cyclicity. Using the junction between the late Nangao age of Qiandong epoch and the early Duyun age of Qiandong epoch as a boundary, each had a full transgression cycle at the upper and lower stages. The early cycle is characterized by high energy clastic littoral facies while the late cycle is characterized by carbonate ramp on which clear water and muddy water developed alternately changing to carbonate platform last. During the early stages, An aulacogen was formed in the middle section of the southern margin. The southern Ordos margin was uplifted and denudated by the Huaiyuan Movement which occurred from the late Furongian age to the middle Flolan age and the history of the passive continental margin ended and entering into a new tectonic cycle. The unconformity surface caused by the Huaiyuan Movement, along with its neighborhood areas where dissolved pores and cavities are developed, may be another important district for good hydrocarbon reservoirs (excluding the unconformity surface on the top of the Ordovician in the Ordos basin).